NASA Delays Launch of SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions for Additional Rocket Checkouts

NASA’s latest space telescope, SPHEREx, designed to search for essential components of life in the Milky Way, and the sun-centered mission PUNCH will have to wait longer before launching together, according to the space agency.

Both missions were scheduled for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 10:09 p.m. ET (7:09 PT) on Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. However, NASA and SpaceX confirmed that mission teams had decided to postpone the launch attempt.

“The additional time will allow teams to continue rocket checkouts ahead of liftoff,” NASA stated in an update. “A new launch date will be announced once confirmed on the range.”

There are multiple launch windows available through April.

Originally, the launch window opened on February 28, but weather conditions and integration challenges emerged as engineers worked to attach both missions to the rocket and secure them within a protective fairing. These issues caused delays, said Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science Missions at SpaceX.

Although SPHEREx and PUNCH have distinct scientific objectives, launching them together reduces costs while enabling more scientific research in space, explained Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Additionally, the missions are heading to similar destinations: a sun-synchronous orbit around Earth’s poles. This orbit ensures that each spacecraft maintains the same orientation relative to the sun throughout the year.

SPHEREx, or the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, aims to explore the evolution of the universe and trace the origins of the fundamental ingredients necessary for life.

PUNCH, or Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, will focus on studying how the sun influences the solar system. The mission will examine the sun’s hot outer atmosphere, known as the corona, and analyze solar wind, which consists of energized particles constantly streaming from the sun.

Both missions are expected to uncover new and previously unseen details about the solar system and the broader galaxy.

“These missions cover the full breadth of the science that NASA does every day,” said Dr. Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “PUNCH … will study the sun in great detail, whereas SPHEREx is a survey mission that will scan the full sky and will observe hundreds of millions of stars. So every minute of the day, NASA science missions are exploring the universe at different scales to really help us understand the universe we live in and understand the sun that keeps our planet alive.”

Tracing the Ingredients for Life

After launch, SPHEREx will spend just over two years in orbit around Earth at an altitude of 404 miles (650 kilometers), gathering data on more than 450 million galaxies. It will also study over 100 million stars within our galaxy.

Mapping the locations of galaxies will provide insights into inflation, the rapid expansion of the universe that occurred almost instantly after the big bang, expanding the cosmos by a factor of a trillion-trillionfold.

The observatory will create a comprehensive map of the sky using 102 colors of infrared light, which are invisible to the human eye but ideal for studying stars and galaxies. By splitting infrared light into different wavelengths, much like a prism, SPHEREx will allow scientists to identify the chemical makeup of celestial objects.

“We are the first mission to look at the whole sky in so many colors,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. “Whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way, we can expect discoveries.”

SPHEREx will also measure the total light emitted by all galaxies, including those too faint or distant to be seen by other telescopes. This will provide a comprehensive picture of all significant sources of light throughout the universe.

A key goal of SPHEREx is to locate evidence of water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other essential life-supporting compounds frozen in interstellar gas and dust clouds.

Astronomers are particularly interested in studying molecular clouds—vast regions of gas and dust—where new stars form. These newly formed stars are likely surrounded by material disks, which eventually shape planets. Scientists theorize that ice attached to tiny dust grains contains the majority of the universe’s water and may have played a role in forming Earth’s oceans.

Identifying the locations and abundance of life’s essential ingredients in our galaxy will help researchers understand how they are incorporated into emerging planets.

SPHEREx will function as a complementary tool to the James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike Webb, which focuses on small areas in great detail, SPHEREx is designed to rapidly scan large sections of the sky. By combining data from both telescopes, scientists can link broad observations to finer details. If SPHEREx detects something of interest, more powerful telescopes like Webb or Hubble can examine it closely.

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sun

PUNCH consists of four small, suitcase-sized satellites that will orbit Earth for two years, studying the sun and its heliosphere, a vast region of magnetic fields and particles extending well beyond Pluto’s orbit.

Each of the four spacecraft carries a camera that collectively functions as a synchronized instrument with a nearly uninterrupted view of the sun. These cameras are equipped with polarizing filters, similar to those in polarized sunglasses, allowing them to map the corona’s features and track solar activity across the solar system.

By working together, the satellites will create three-dimensional global observations of how the sun’s outer atmosphere transitions into solar wind. This will provide scientists with a better understanding of the mechanisms behind this process. PUNCH will also analyze how the corona and solar wind interact with the rest of the solar system. It will be the first mission to image both phenomena together.

Solar wind and solar storms play a crucial role in shaping space weather, which impacts Earth. While they can create stunning auroras near the poles, they also have the potential to disrupt satellite communications and cause power grid failures.

The data collected by PUNCH will improve scientists’ ability to predict space weather by helping them understand how solar storms develop and evolve. The mission is launching at a particularly significant time, as the sun is nearing its solar maximum—a peak in its 11-year activity cycle—when an increase in solar flares and storms is expected.

“What we hope PUNCH will bring to humanity is the ability to really see, for the first time, where we live inside the solar wind itself,” said Craig DeForest, principal investigator for PUNCH at Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado.

Like SPHEREx and the James Webb Space Telescope, PUNCH will collaborate with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 and recently completed its closest-ever approach to the sun. Together, these missions will provide both close-up and large-scale views of solar activity.

“PUNCH is the latest heliophysics addition to the NASA fleet that delivers groundbreaking science every second of every day,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “Launching this mission as a rideshare bolsters its value to the nation by optimizing every pound of launch capacity to maximize the scientific return for the cost of a single launch.”